Saving a tree
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
It was cool seeing the two giant hoes clawing the ground to pull the tree along.
I wonder if the tree actually survived the move.
Now juxtapose this with the tree grinder.
Lets get a little perspective here, all of those earth moving machines plus two high powered lifting machines barely moved that tree that is lets approximate / estimate to weigh including the the box and earth maybe, 30 tons for the tree and another 150 tons for the box? 180 ton total gross weight? Maybe more? Maybe less?
Now lets look at something, one among many, that was cut and moved miles and is thousands of years old that weighs approximately 1000 tons!
http://youtu.be/JElDe5co5W8
Heh. I wondered whether anyone would notice the contrast.
Hey, no one is denying the achievements of past pre-industrial age societies. They were clever engineers, like all humans, and figured out how to move big objects using the tools and labor at hand. There isn’t anything mysterious about this either. You need to move a big monolith and you don’t have our heavy equipment, you use man hours combined with the basic lever and wheel to make it happen.
Nonetheless, these are inanimate rocks. Moving a living tree this size without killing it is a far more challenging task, and I am skeptical pre-industrial societies could have done it successfully.
Point taken and appreciated.